Blag o' dkam

Virgin will apparently be releasing the iPhone on Friday 1st of August. According to the article previously linked, they’ll be offering the 16GB iPhone for $4 a month on the $70 a month plan which includes 1GB of data. Not too shabby at all! Apparently, these plans have driven Telstra to increase it’s plans by including up to 7.5x the data of the previous plans! Which is still $10 for 150MB (up from 20MB) or $29 for 300MB (up from 80MB). It’s hard to believe that an improvement of that magnitude still sucks. Naturally they haven’t sold out of the iPhone.

Three, who still don’t have the iPhone, will apparently be looking to steal other carriers customers with some new plans for those who migrate to them with a 3G phone. The plans will be released on the 4th, but the tubez tell us that $49 gets you $350 worth of calls and 1GB of data. Excess data is a moderate 10c/MB. Not great, but not $15/MB like Virgin.

It’s great to see some serious improvement in data allowances from Australia’s carriers. Even Telstra is being dragged along. The iPhone apparently has carriers excited that Australians may finally be making use of those shiny 3G networks that they’ve invested in. No doubt this will spur other phone manufacturers to get their buts into gear – people actually like using the internetz on their phones – if it’s easy enough. Should be exciting to see how things grow.

Well, I got a response from Virgin. I wasn’t going to post it – it was a bit…. flaccid. But people were asking….

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your email.

At this stage, we have do not have any updates to our data subscription
plans as we believe that our prices are competitive against our
competitors. This is for mobile data browsing and cannot be compared to
the mobile broadband services of other competitors. We do offer a
wireless broadband service which is $39 for 5GB of usage with no excess
fees if you do require more data.

If you have any further questions or feedback, please feel free to call
us on 1300 555 100 between 7am and 11pm EST, 7 days a week.
Alternatively, you can contact us at -

http://www.virginmobile.com.au/talktous.html

Kind Regards,

######.
The Virgin Mobile Team

Hmmm – didn’t really answer my questions.

Hi ########
You misunderstand – I believe 1GB for $15 is excellent value. What I’m complaining about is 1.5c / KB for excess usage, with no effective method of managing your usage. Virgin throttles their mobile broadband users – it would be great to see the same system for mobile data browsing. Other carriers charge ( for mobile data browsing – not mobile broadband) 10c / MB for excess usage. Virgin charges $15 / MB.

Apparently the ACCC is also looking at this issue:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/iphone-insider/watchdog-sniffs-at-mobile-excess-usage-fees/2008/07/21/1216492331116.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Does Virgin have any plans to allow users to monitor or manage their mobile data browsing usage or reduce the excess fee to a reasonable level?

Thanks,
Dan

PS: I’m using your expression “Mobile data browsing” to mean broadband on your phone and “Mobile Broadband” to mean a 3G modem in your laptop.

Got a reply quick smart:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your email.

We are always looking to improve our prices to remain competitive. I can
assure you that we are constantly looking into our charges but as such I
cannot give you an idea as to what our management are looking in to.

Mobile browsing usage is fairly up to date as I use it myself and we do
have that clause in case our servers take some time to update. It
probably would be best to keep monitoring your usage daily so as to not
exceed the limit.

If you have any further questions or feedback, please feel free to call
us on 1300 555 100 between 7am and 11pm EST, 7 days a week.
Alternatively, you can contact us at -

http://www.virginmobile.com.au/talktous.html

Kind Regards,

#######
The Virgin Mobile Team

http://www.virginmobile.com.au/

Well, what did I expect?

Tonight when I checked my online usage, for the first time since I got the iPhone, there was something to see! That’s right – in a week I’ve used… 8MB. Presumably that doesn’t include the last two days of surfing. I’d say my 1GB Quota is going to be just fine.

I found an amazing bit of free software on the iTunes App store called Shazam. The idea of the software is that you send them a sample of some music, and they’ll figure out the Artist, Album, Trackname and so on. On the iPhone, what you do is fireup the Shazam App, click “Tag Now” button which starts the program recording music. It records between 8 – 15 seconds ( depending on how you configure it ) then sends that sample ( or maybe just a fingerprint of the sample ) off to the Shazam service on the internetz. A few seconds later, the program displays the artist, album, track and coverart. It it has any, it’ll also send links to listen to/buy the song on iTunes and links to YouTube to watch the filmclip.

In the few times I’ve used it, the hit rate has been very high. It has missed some tracks ( mostly Finnish tracks ) but overall it’s been quite amazing. I gave it a road test today standing in a café wondering what the music playing was. Fired up Shazam, and less than 30 seconds later, I’ve got all the track details, artist and album art. This track had no links to iTunes or YouTube unfortunately. Really quite a remarkable service.

Got myself an iPhone and so naturally it’s time to get the iPhone interface working. It’s a bit simpler – specifically the cart functionality has been disabled.

Additionally, I did a bit of refactoring which should speed things up.

asdf

To: team@virginmobile.com.au

Hi Guys,

I’ll preface this email by saying I’m a long time Virgin mobile user and I’ve always been very happy with the value and service I’ve received. However, I just got myself an iPhone to connect to the Virgin network. I’ve added the $15 / 1GB browsing option (again, excellent value), but after talking to your help line, I’m surprised to learn the cost of exceeding my quota. It’s beyond excessive: it’s ludicrous. 1.5 cents per KB works out to $15.36 for 1 MB and $15,728.64 for 1 GB.

15 bucks for the first GB, over 15 thousand bucks for the second GB. Crazy!

As outrageous as that is, it gets worse. When looking to see how I could manage my usage, I see that the online “Mobile Browsing Usage” claims “Amounts shown are estimates only, and may not include last 2 days usage”. So, watching a few too many YouTube Videos will likely end up costing hundreds or thousands of dollars. Your helpdesk people told me there is no way to be automatically alerted to my impending exhaustion of quota / bankruptcy.

My Three mobile broadband modem costs 10c / MB for excess usage. Compared to Virgin’s $15 / MB, Virgin is 150x more expensive.

Before I start researching my move to Three, Optus or Vodafone, does Virgin have any plans to fix this problem? For example, your mobile broadband package is brilliant – throttled web access! Hit your quota and be throttled down to dial up speeds is an great idea. Why can’t we have this with our mobile phone broadband plans?

Hope to hear from you,

Cheers,
Dan

Ian introduced me to this concept. I have to say it looks like fun. These guys are flying their planes via a wireless camera and a set of video googles. They also have gyros on their heads, such that when they move their head right, the camera pans right.

Apologies in advance for the terrible music.

This is the first video I saw – so cool.

Went out driving our RC cars today with Josh. Took a bunch of photos. Here’s a selection.

First up we have Josh about to nose dive into the ground:

Next, we have Josh jumping my Baldre off the track.

I should add that jumping off the track was a very common occurrence. After the race track we headed back to the BMX track & half pipe. I really enjoy driving on gravel surface – very slippery and you’re often sideways. It could also be that it seems to be the only surface that I manage to beat Josh on. Josh has an edge over me on packed dirt and asphalt.

The Half-Pipes are so much fun, but a breakage is likely. Here’s Josh getting his car off the ground:

Not to be out done:

And lastly, I had to break my car. Again. Luckily I guessed this might happen and had replacement parts on the ready.

What I didn’t expect was the pin which holds that part to the car bending. After much straining with a Leatherman, we got the pin straight enough to put everything back together.

I’ve taken Phil’s advice and removed the Javascript from the body’s onload event handler, replacing it with Prototype’s event handler.

    <script type="text/javascript">
    Event.observe(
             window,
             "load",
         <%=  remote_function :url => { :action => "get_prices", :isbn13 => @book.isbn13  },:method => :get %>
        );
    </script>

Judging by the actions of the NSW government, Catholics are so thin skinned that they need extra police protection. Police have been granted special powers to deal with people who confront attendees of the WYD with ideas the Pope doesn’t agree with. According to some observers, wearing slogans or handing out condoms at WYD could get you in trouble. Group Think will probably be OK.

Thank God the media is on the case.

From the Age : http://news.theage.com.au/national/youth-day-protesters-to-offer-condoms-20080701-2zlj.html

Powers approved by the NSW government allow for people who continually annoy or inconvenience pilgrims during the event, to be staged in Sydney from July 15 to 20, to be arrested and possibly fined $5,500.

From the ABC : http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/01/2290617.htm

Draconian, repugnant and unnecessary. These are just a few of the criticisms of special regulations coming into force for the upcoming Catholic World Youth Day event in Sydney.

Civil libertarians and legal experts say the regulations could see situations such as someone deemed to be wearing an offensive T-shirt being arrested and given a hefty fine.

New South Wales Police say the measures are designed simply to ensure that World Youth Day is a peaceful and happy event.

From the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7482696.stm

Lawyers in Australia say that police powers introduced for a major gathering of young Roman Catholics later this month will undermine free speech. Under the powers, police will be able to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance or inconvenience” to participants in World Youth Day.

From News.News.News.News.com: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23951245-5016937,00.html

NSW POLICE have been given extraordinary new powers for World Youth Day, including being able to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to participants and conduct partial strip searches.

….

Critics say the new powers have the potential to make wearing a T-shirt with a slogan, a protest like handing out condoms or a Chaser-style stunt a crime, while civil libertarians believe the powers are more extreme and than those used during last year’s APEC summit.